The present invention generally relates to a host computer and peripheral devices, and more specifically, to connecting a host computer to peripheral devices by a service channel.
A solid-state disk or drive (SSD) is one type of flash memory device. A disk array is a disk storage system that contains multiple drives (e.g., multiple SSDs). A host adapter connects a host computer to the multiple drives in the disk array. For example, the host adapter may include multiple channels that allows for the various drives to communicate with the host adapter. Serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) and serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) are computer bus technologies for transferring data between devices (e.g., between the host computer and the various drives).
In the event a drive locks up or goes offline during system use, there are limitations to either collecting the status of the drive, or attempting drive recovery. Specifically, if the drive is unresponsive to a SAS or SATA based channel command, there is no approach for collecting the drive status or to attempt drive recovery. If, on the other hand, the drive is responsive to SAS or SATA based channel commands, then it is possible to collect the drive status and attempt drive recovery. However, collection of the drive status and the drive recovery also consumes some of the channel bandwidth, thus increasing response times.